


Motivation

by moonboots



Category: Fire Emblem: If | Fire Emblem: Fates
Genre: Blood and Injury, Gen, M/M, Near Death Experiences, Pre-Slash
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-08
Updated: 2015-10-08
Packaged: 2018-04-25 11:31:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,813
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4958962
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/moonboots/pseuds/moonboots
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“Heh…this was…inevitable…A fitting end for me…” Camilla has been looking forward to giving the ‘hurt him and I’ll kill you’ speech for years, but not only does her target fail to recognize the relationship on his horizon, he seems far too resigned to that second part already.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Motivation

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by Ashura's classic mode death quote.

Pathetic. 

Ashura laid in the dirt, feeling blood leech up the front of his shirt. He wasn't inclined to do anything about it; his hands barely twitched when he tried to roll himself over, and he knew he was too far from the main force to scream for help. Not that he had the breath to scream in the first place -- the blade through his stomach had ensured that his final breaths would be weak and shallow. 

He couldn't even say he'd given his life for a comrade. The ambush had left them scattered, and nobody had been in sight when the sword ran him through. The enemy soldier hadn't bothered to finish him off before sprinting away to rejoin the battle.

There was no energy left in him to pick his face up out of the dirt when he heard the crackle of fragile leaves under a boot. Perhaps the soldier had changed his mind and decided that his corpse was worth looting after all. 

"A fitting end...for someone like me..." he muttered.

"Ah, now that won't do at all. Imagine if Kamui heard you say that."

His heart skipped a beat in surprise, but his body refused to obey him. All he could do was tilt his head to one side. Only the autumn leaves of the forest were before him, incongruously peaceful, and he wondered if he was hallucinating. It would be an appropriate form for the reaper to take. "Lady Camilla? Is… Lord Kamui..."

"You have a way of saying the one thing that could endear you to me," she said with an edge of exasperation. "Dear Kamui is quite alright. The only danger to him is worrying himself half to death over the soldiers that have yet to report back. Like you." The steps drew closer to his back; she was behind him, he realized belatedly. He heard leaves crunch as she knelt down. "Come now, up you go. Let me see --"

A strong hand slid under his shoulder and pushed him up. Agony obliterated his senses.

He wasn't entirely sure when he came back to himself, because the burning in his abdomen never stopped. It didn't recede, either; he just slowly became aware that he was able to think again. The first thing he noticed was a bitter tang in his mouth. He had no memory of drinking anything, and his mind refused to process anything past that confusion. Well, it wasn't the first time in his life he'd regained consciousness in horrible pain with a strange taste in his mouth, a distant part of him thought.

Sound came next. The dull roar in his ears wasn't the pounding of his own blood, but the wind. And there was something else, too -- after a moment of concentration the melodious noise resolved itself into words. Maybe he wasn't conscious after all, because they made no sense. 

"...you know, this conversation isn't nearly as fun as I imagined it being. I thought up some excellent threats, but it's not the same when someone can't react."

"What...?" He could hardly force sound through lips that felt like boot leather.

"Oh, so you're awake after all. I was beginning to worry the shock had done you in. Be a dear and hold this, it's very important." His hands were grasped and pushed over a thick, damp cloth at his stomach. The pressure was enough to make him hiss in pain, and his eyes finally cracked open. 

The bright blue of the sky was blinding. His eyes refused to focus, skittering aimlessly until they fell on something dark as his head tilted down. The back of a wyvern's head, he realized, and the chain of events finally began to make sense in his mind.

Lady Camilla had him tucked in front of her in the saddle of her wyvern, an arm around his waist keeping his limp body in place. They were flying, and the wind had to be buffeting his face, but for some reason he could hardly feel it.

He looked down. 

For a moment, he saw the wyvern's neck as both dark red and black at the same time. It was supposed to be black, he was sure, and the longer he looked the more he began to realize that the red sheen was splattered blood. It saturated his pants (it felt unfair that he could still make out discomfort apart from the wall of pain, but wet pants were a uniquely uncomfortable sensation) and smeared a crimson mess across the beast's neck. He could hardly recognize that the makeshift bandage around his stomach was his own cloak, the green having been stained to a gory red-black.

"Oh."

"Yes, 'oh'. Probably for the best you weren’t awake for getting up here. It's a shame he didn't leave the sword in you," she sighed. "Not that I especially wanted to see you impaled, but --"

"The bleeding slows, I know. Not...my first time being stabbed." He could feel her breasts move against his back as she chuckled, and he mused that it was probably a good thing he was so light-headed. Otherwise, this might be awkward.

"It's good to keep a sense of humor. Maybe that's why Kamui likes you."

"It is my first time being rescued," he offered. 

"Oh, how polite. I can tell you weren't planning on it, given the single vulnerary you were carrying." Her voice never lost its teasing lilt, and it took him a moment to realize he was being reprimanded.

"Didn't want to...waste a full set. I can take a hit better than Lady Elise." It was an exceptionally lame defense considering his current situation (he would have been embarrassed to say something so patently wrong if he had the energy for self-deprecation), but it was the truth. He never bothered to take a fresh brace of vulneraries until his current supply was exhausted, partly because he had never been able to freely obtain more. Stronger elixirs didn’t even enter into his calculations.

"Hmph. I had to soak your cloak in two of mine to slow the bleeding after getting one down your throat. You're lucky one of us was prepared." At least that explained the mysterious taste in his mouth. 

"Why are you such a fatalist? I can't understand why you wanted us to spare you on the boat when you're so ready to accept death now."

"I don't..." He tried to think of his actions on the Nohr-Hoshido sea. He remembered being bitterly flippant, asking for his life to be spared almost as an afterthought and pressing with annoyance when he wasn't given an immediate sentence. Nohr was not merciful to criminals; he had wanted it to be over with quickly. Hands were cut off at the first offense, and there wasn't a second. Death was infinitely preferable to being unable to defend himself in the seedy underbelly of Nohr. Of all the unsavory things he had done to survive over the years, willingly and less so, he knew how much worse things could be if he couldn't fight or heal. Camilla pressed on. He wondered if he'd faded out again, because he couldn't quite figure out what she was talking about. 

"You're in much better circumstances now, aren't you? If you keep being so self-centered, you'll make Kamui upset."

Oh, he realized belatedly. This was the "appreciate the chance we gave you and don't betray us" conversation. Lady Camilla had never given him a personal dressing-down after Kamui spared him; he thought her support of beheading him at the time had gotten the message across quite well, but he supposed he was deserving of the suspicion. Her timing was bizarre, though. Hopefully she didn't save all of her serious conversations for death's door. 

"I'm not...going to do anything to betray Kamui." He did his best to stay polite to the royal family, both because of his situation and because old habits died hard. A lifetime ago, he had been trained as a retainer, but pain and stress loosened his tongue. "And if you really thought I would, you'd drop me off this lizard right now."

For a terrifying moment he thought she actually would, because there was silence from behind him. Then she laughed, sending ripples of pain through his back, and patted his head. 

"Ah...well, I'll be generous and blame the blood loss. I suppose a bit of obliviousness can be cute, too. But Kamui does notice every time you don't take dinner with everyone else, so I expect improvements to be made."

"Alright," he said thickly. He didn't fully understand, but physically couldn't keep asking questions. Shallow and rapid breathing was the only way he could keep from jarring his belly wound.

"Excellent. We can finish this talk once you're patched up. Don't think I won't take advantage of you being flat on your back for a week in recovery," she tittered. "You've made a better impression, but I don't want to waste all the thinking I did. I won't get a chance to use lines like those again until Elise starts dating."

If he replied, he couldn't hear himself. It was so hard to focus on words he couldn't follow, and as much as he wanted to be annoyed that she was talking over his head, he felt too removed from everything that wasn't hurt.

It could have been ten seconds or ten minutes that he drifted. As hard as he tried to build a spark of thought, the haze of pain smothered every attempt. His eyes shuttered as his mind quieted.

"...sorry for this."

Bolts of pain lanced through his belly, burning away the fog in his mind as a clawed gauntlet dug into his stomach. His eyes flew open, and an involuntary scream was torn out of him to be lost on the wind.

Camilla's hand pulled back immediately, rubbing his shoulder as he struggled to get a hold of himself. Trying to catch his breath when anything but shallow inhalations only made him lose it again was a hellish cycle, and he struggled with rapid, high pitched gasps for some time. His eyes were wet by the time his breathing approached something regular, if not normal. He groaned piteously in askance. 

"I've been calling your name," Camilla said with regret in her voice. 

"M'cold." It wasn't exactly a direct response, but hopefully she took it as both understanding of her action and explanation for his. He hadn't fully registered how cold he was until saying it aloud, and now that he had, he marveled at having missed the ice in his fingers and tingling in his face. If only he could shiver.

Camilla made a noise of disapproval and adjusted something behind him, drawing a wince from him as his support moved. She wrapped something around his shoulders; looking down, he recognized her shawl. 

"It's not ideal, but we'd have to stop to pull the saddle blanket off. And Elise hates the stink of wyvern, so I'd rather she not have to deal with that and all the blood. She's taken quite a shine to you, you know."

"She always...asks me to show her hidden paths." A smile touched his face. He never could bring himself to tell kids to buzz off, even when he was in the worst moods. Elise would often trail after Kamui, and when Kamui spent time with him, she would run up to ask her big brother for this or that. Much to his surprise, she was soon asking him to play hide and seek with her as well. Apparently Kamui's friendship was proof enough for him to be considered a worthy playmate.

"My sweet Kamui and Elise would certainly cry if you chose to die right above our camp, so I'm going to have to ask you to hold on for a little longer."

"Camp?"

"We made camp closer to the river once the battle was won. You're not the only straggler; the ambush scattered our forces. Leon's unit has yet to report in, as well."

"Your brother is still lost? And you...rescued me?" Why on earth hadn't she written him off as a lost cause and focused on something more important? 

She clicked her tongue. "That's exactly the kind of talk I don't want to hear from you. Leon's retainers are survivors; it's going to take more than half an hour before I start panicking. That Odin is more reliable than he looks. You were higher priority because you were cut off and alone. And I told you -- Kamui would cry."

His reply was eaten by a groan as the wyvern's pace changed. Mounted travel wasn't something he was familiar with; he couldn't tell what the beast was doing without checking their position relative to the ground. Camilla leaned forward, pressing him down.

"You're just going to have to accept that you're important. The sooner, the better."

With great reluctance, he could accept that saving him was the right thing to do, at least. It made more trouble for an army if one man tried to strike out on his own, senselessly putting his comrades at risk to maintain his own solitude. It had been such a long time since he had been in an organized group, where his compliance could ruin a formation. 

"Sorry," he mumbled, hoping that summed it all up. She gave his shoulder a friendly pat, and her voice became businesslike. 

"Now, when we hit the ground, I need you to stay awake. I'll make the landing as soft as I can, but a wyvern is a wyvern. It'll go more smoothly for everyone if Kamui knows you're alive right away. The last time he saw someone he cared about die...well. Better to avoid that."

He was having trouble understanding why she was saying all that, but he could grasp not wanting to upset Kamui. He was such a kind young man, and took every wound his subjects suffered as if it were his own. It was bad enough to see the worry in Kamui's eyes over someone like himself in the first place. 

"I'm sure Elise will be waiting, so Harold will help you down -- dear Effie could certainly lift you, but he's taller -- and then you have my full approval to faint."

"This is going to hurt, isn't it," he muttered, staring at the ground out of the corner of his eye. He could make out tents under the edges of the trees as they spiraled in. 

"Pain is a part of life," Camilla said philosophically.

Within the span of a blink, the ground loomed closer, and Camilla was lightly smacking his cheek. "Come on, we're nearly there. Tell me again what you're doing when we land?"

"Ah...see Kamui, faint on...Harold..." He thought he heard a voice on the breeze, someone calling his name in the distance. His head lolled to the side, but although the ground was closer, he could make out less of it than before. 

"Good boy." She patted his head, and he couldn't even bring himself to be annoyed with the condescension. Planning his next breath took up all of his concentration. "Now, brace yourself."

The wyvern dropped. She released the reins at the last second to tighten both arms around him, and that was all the warning he got before gravity slammed him into the wyvern's back. 

It felt like falling off a bridge. He could remember breaking his leg after a bad landing as a young ninja in training, and that memory was nothing next to the bone-rattling violence of the shock of landing. Black flowers bloomed across his vision. The pain would have made him vomit if the muscles in his belly weren't cut to ribbons; as it was, the impact forced a scream out of him that was only cut short by his lack of breath. 

There was yelling all around him, noises that he couldn't make sense of. Camilla was talking, but he couldn't follow that, either. The people in the landing zone were an indistinct blur.

His unfocused eyes slid across the smears of color, until they found a comforting red that was nothing like the blood drenching him. 

"Ashura!"

There was no sound when his lips moved, so he smiled instead.

Camilla was shifting him around again, and there were broad hands sliding under his legs. 

He could pick out Kamui's voice above the others, hear the music of his name being spoken as his eyes drifted shut. As numb as he felt, he thought there was a hand brushing the filthy hair out of his face. Even through the pain of being jostled again, it felt impossible that there was something to worry about now that he was with Kamui.

He finally sank into unconsciousness, a smile lingering on his face.


End file.
